What our customers say

Clean Summer Air after a Thunderstorm

This tea found me. So I paid attention. Opening the bag revealed the aroma of grandmother’s kitchen on baking day. The brewed tea morphed from comforting to purifying — it truly has a broad range. There is a crispness to it that reminds me of the lightest sandalwood incense wafting from afar. I am on my third infusion and it appears the tea can steep for quite a long time with no bitterness. The taste evokes for me the cleansed and cooled air after a summer thunderstorm. The leaves bloom into perfect green foliage which I imagine look exactly as they do when they are freshly picked.

Your wonderful writing

@Karen, I have to tell you how amused I am reading all these nicely written reviews you so kindly shared on this site. “I now mourn all the years I wasted drinking ‘shadow-of-tea-powder’ that comes in a typical western tea bag” What wonderful art of the word!

Oh yes, indeed, this Honey Orchid Supreme is a tea that many of my tea importer clients want “samples” for their own enjoyment, but quite rarely dare to sell by themselves!

This tea is an enigma. It’s a Pandora’s Box of flavors and sensations that shows a different side of itself every time you brew it up. Like a chameleon, it is very colorful and dynamic, and constantly shifting around as the soup cools, or as the leaves are being warmed back up as more water is poured into the brewing vessel.

It’s also a very sophisticated and elegant experience. The complex nature of Ya Shi Xiang as a cultivar is perfectly captured in Tea Hong’s Orchid Literati – it would be difficult to find a deeper, rounder, and more wholesome expression than this, despite Ya Shi being a popular cultivar.

It’s not just the additional layers of flavor that make Orchid Literati stand out as one of the very best Ya Shi you could ever hope to find, it’s the additional dimensions. Much like watching an old movie on a flat-screen, in black-and-white, then watching that same film re-mastered in 3-D with ultra-high definition colors, so too does this Orchid Literati re-master and upgrade my experience with a cultivar that I know and love.

Besides the sheer breadth and depth of the flavor profile, one thing that really stands out to me about Orchid Literati is how clearly the terroir comes across – I can taste the soil and feel the minerals which fed these trees, and that alone is deeply quenching for my dancong-drinking soul.

It’s not difficult to find a “good enough” example of Ya Shi because it’s an easily-approachable cultivar and there are a lot of really good examples out there… but quality of this caliber is exceptionally rare, and for the price point this sits at, it’s a no-brainer to pick up a bag (or two) and experience the magic for yourself.

I bought 1kg of Huang Zhi Xiang in Chau Zhou at 5000 RMB/ jin so it is more expensive tea than this Danhu tea. I did tasting comparison with friends. This tea wins without doubt. Drink it quietly. This tea transcending with most wonderful tastes and scents.

This is a good example of baked Tieguanyin, it’s got good firing techniques coupled with good leaf material, and it’s pretty flexible in terms of how it can be brewed up. It always creates a deeply enjoyable cup of tea in the handful of times I’ve brewed it so far. This tea is going to be awesome in the fall and winter time – but even during the cooler days of the hot summer, which I’m in right now, it’s proven to be quite refreshing.

I enjoy the way the soft floral and stronger fruity notes come to the forefront of the palate with each progressive sip, gently being supported by the clear notes of charcoal without ever becoming smothered by them. The baking accents the flavor profile and adds an interesting depth by bringing out a kind of fruity sweetness that is usually obliterated when the firing is taken too far… which is quite often, unfortunately.

Anybody can burn a batch of tea leaves, either at too high a temperature or for too long, or perhaps even a combination of both – and call it a “high roast”, but this takes no skill to achieve. What does take skill to achieve, is a proper firing that elevates the inherent qualities of the tea leaf being processed. There are molecular changes to the constituents of the leaf that are induced by good firing techniques, and these are what create depth in sweetness and distinct accents in the floral and fruity layers of the flavor profiles, which is what I find in this Tieguanyin Classic.

It’s nice to see an example of proper firing techniques in something priced superbly well for daily drinking. If you’re looking for a roasted Tieguanyin as your daily-drinker, this is a great choice.

The leaf quality is fantastic, as these little nuggets unfurl slowly across both gong-fu and Western-style infusions, and across a wide temperature range, they are uniform and have some stoutness to them even after taking a long bath in water fresh off a rolling boil. They hold their composure well and resist turning bitter. Even as the cup cools, the tea remains crisp and clear in its flavor profile.

Hello Mrs Ngo, normally we inspect our pre-Qingming green teas around early to mid April but need quality assurance processes for another two weeks. So likely to be late April the earliest. Will send mass newsletter to all registered customers when available.